Keep the Hope!

4/27/15

Hello friends and family!

Things are still going well here at Papeari. Every day seems to present itself with a new challenge but I like trying to figure out the best way to get to the soution. We lost two of our most progressing investigators yesterday; it was probably one of the hardest things I have had to live through. It is so hard to see someone you love take the wrong path when they were so close to finding themselves in Christ. Of course when we received the news I automatically thought about all of the things that I could have done better that maybe could have helped the situation. I am sure there are lots of things but I finally accepted that we have to leave the people with their agency and trust that God will provide a way. I have loved having the opportunity to hope this last week. To improve my faith in God and to accept His will. I am still trying to be the missionary that God wants me to be so that He can continue to show us miracles that will strengthen our testimonies. Like we learn in Ether 12:6, the testimony comes only after the trial of our faith. But we have to show our Heavenly Father that we have this faith. We need to be obedient, diligent, hopeful, and try to be perfected in Christ each day. I read a scripture this week in the bible that I loved! It was in Col. 3:14. It tells us how to receive perfection. It says that CHARITY IS THE BOND OF PERFECTION. So as I continue to live my mission through the good days and the hard days I will try to always have charity so I can be perfected as a missionary which will be how I can show my faith and hope to our Heavenly Father and when this is done, we are worthy of the miracles and blessings that He wants to give us and it will be easier for us to accept His will. I know this Church is true. I am thankful for our trials because they give us the opportunity to rely on the love of God, be saved by our Savior, Jesus Christ, and stay worthy to receive the guidance of the Holy Ghost each day. Keep your heads up! God loves you! He is always there for you! Thanks again for all of your love, support, and encouragement! I love you all! Keep Sœur Faana and I in your prayers!

Love, Sœur Heather Kofford

Serving in paradise!

Is God Proud of us?

4/20/15

Bonjour friends and family! My second week went well here at Papeari. We found four new investigators which was such a blessing! They are Sam, Rebecca, Monisa, and Manarii. So if you want you can pray for them and that would be great. I still love my mission and love serving and helping others find themselves through coming to Christ but things are a little bit hard. My companion is great and I am so blessed to be with her but we are different and have found that we have different opinions and different ways of working. But I still know that I am with her for a reason and I will keep loving her and serving her until I find the reason. Even if it is just to relearn patience, humility, and charity those are good enough reasons for me. I know that it will not be easy but it is possible. With this big change in my mission I have had moments where I felt a little bit lost and did not quite know what to do. I wanted to stay busy and diligent but she has her ideas as well. I truly was a little bit broken because I wanted to remain a worthy missionary in the eyes of God. When all of these thoughts were rushing through my head, I ran across a scripture that helped me through the week. It was 3 Nephi 11:7. It is God who talks about His son. Ha I read it in French but in English it says something along the lines of, "This is my beloved son in which I am well pleased, hear Him." I thought a lot about this scripture and realised that God was always proud of His son. He loved His son with all of His heart and was always pleased with Him. Then I thought to myself that I want God to be proud of me like He is His son. And for God to be proud of us, all we have to do is follow the example of His son, Jesus Christ. I am so thankful for this example that we have and this role model that we have to follow in our lives. As I thought about Jesus Christ, I know that His life was not easy. He was persecuted, tempted, tortured, and killed. But through it all, He did exactly the will of the Father. He was exactly obedient, He was patient, He was humble, and He was charitable and loved everyone. I know that things are not always supposed to be easy. It was not easy for Him and it should not be easy for us. But it is possible. These hard times really let us find who we can become. The potential that only God knows. We all have trials and are all a little bit broken. But God loves broken things. I did a study on that this week and read all the scriptures that had the word "broken" in it. It was amazing. In life, we have to break the wheat to make bread, we have to break a horse to be able to ride it safely, we have to be broken to let God give us the opportunity to mold us into our perfect selves. I am thankful for this opportunity to improve, to change, and to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ each day. I know that if I will continue to strive to be like Him each day, God will fix us and He will be proud of us like He was for His son. So when times get tough . . . remember that GOD LOVES BROKEN THINGS! And that He loves you and is so PROUD of each and every one of you! I love you and am so thankful for all that you do for me! Thank you for your love and support and for your prayers! I am so grateful! I hope you have a great week! 

Love, Soeur Kofford

Loving my mission!

PAPEARI! Moi et Soeur Faana!

Thinking of home! This picture is for dad!

Serving with Sister Faana!

Papeari!

4/13/15

Friends and family, 

I have successfully been transferred. I can honestly tell you all that it was one of the hardest things I have done until this point in my life. I love Huahine. I love the members. I love our investigators, and I loved my companions. I was so incredibly blessed to have served there on that beautiful island. The day I left it was hard to do our lessons because we had people calling and saying goodbye all day, people wanting to meet up with us to give me a little gift or note, and people just offering to help in anyway possible knowing we did not have a car. These people are amazing. When it got time to go to the airport, everyone had already beat us there. The entire ward of Fare, Huahine was waiting for us. I could not believe my eyes! I had a hard time telling everyone goodbye and boarding the plane. As I was climbing the stairs to the plane, I looked out one more time at the beautiful night sky of Huahine and found in the light of the airport that my ward had all waited to make sure I got on the plane. People are so amazing. It truly is like I knew these people before and I just needed to take some time to get to know them again. We truly did become family. I trust these people and truly do love them with all of my heart. I was so sad to be leaving but did not want to cry on the plane haha so I immediately started talking to the scary tattoo man who was next to me. Soon enough, I had his name, his number, a date, and time set up for the missionaries of Mahina. You never know who God has been preparing and I never want to lose an opportunity to teach someone who has been prepared to hear the gospel from me. When I arrived here at Papeari things were not as I expected. I soon found out that we have zero progressing investigators. My companion has been here for three transfers and is a little bit tired of this area . . . things are just not as good as they could be. These things a long with lots more made the last four days pretty difficult. I felt like up until this point in my mission that I was always progressing, changing, becoming a better person . . . the person that God wants me to be. And then when I arrived here it was a sudden stop. We did not have lessons, the spirit was not as strong, and our companionship was interesting. I was sad and distressed and did not know what to do. But then a thought came to my mind. In life, we have to fall at times to be able to ask God to help us and lift us back up higher than we originally were. Again, it is in our extremity that God finds His opportunity to make us stronger and better than ever before. I have prayed so much over the past four days and am thankful for God's love for me. I am thankful that we have a God who loves us. A Savior who saves us each and every day that we live, and the spirit who can comfort and guide us. I am happy that I have the opportunity to better apply these three important things in my life. I know the key to success on a mission is just to love. I will try to love this ward and my companion with the same love that I gave on the island of Huahine. I know that God wants us to love and be loved. I am so thankful for Him and His love for me and for your love for me and for the opportunity I have to love! Never miss a chance to love! People are in need of your love! I know that there are lots of reasons why I am here in this new area of Papeari! Haha and I will just keep loving until I find them! Thank you for everything! Your love, support, prayers, everything! I love love love you all and am so blessed to have you in my life! Keep Soeur Faana and I in your prayers! Have a great week! 

Love, Soeur Heather Kofford

Transferred from Huahine to Papeari!

Last day with Soeur Martin!

Sister missionaries!

Vanina family!

Wong family!

Lemaire family!

Happy Easter!

4/6/15

Iaorana friends and family! 

Wow I do not even know what to say or where to start! It was another amazing week and I still love my mission! I started out my week by reading a scripture in the bible that talked about how if we have God on our side, then who is really against us. So this week I tried to involve our Heavenly Father in our missionary work as much as possible. I truly do love seeing the hands of God in our lives and in the lives of others. I love seeing His blessings and His miracles that He willingly grants to everyone if we will do our part. One of my absolutely favorite things as a missionary is seeing the lives of others change for the better. Watching them improve their faith, receiving the desire to repent and use the atonement, and ultimately make the decision to be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost to be totally purified for their sins. The gospel of Jesus Christ is so amazing! And I thank Heavenly Father each day for the blessing I have of being able to have this knowledge and truth and having the opportunity to share it. Something we all need to remember as well is that these steps are possible only through our Savior, Jeus Christ. Since it was Easter this week I hope you all thought a lot about Him and remember what He did for each and every one of us! He chose to come to earth and to suffer the pains of all of our sins. His life was not easy, He was persecuted and mocked. And after all of that, in the garden of Gethsemene, He took upon Him the sins of the world. He also gave His life on the cross and gave us the best example of forgiveness when He asked the father to forgive the world for they knew not what they did. And three days after He was resurrected. And it is through this that we can all be ressurected as well. He gave everyone the gift of immortality. I loved how in general conference lots of talks were on Adam and Eve and the Atonement. I truly do know that the fall of Adam and Eve was forseen by God. It was part of His plan. Before the plan when Adam and Eve were in the garden it was good because they were in the presence of God and were immortal. But at the same time they could not have children and could not know joy because they could not know good from evil. After the fall it was good because they could fulfill the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth and also they knew joy because their eyes were opened to the things of good and evil, but they could sin and also they would eventually die. But it is through our Savior Jesus Christ and His atonement that all is made right.  Even the bad affects of the fall were made good through Him. I know that if we will turn to Him and ask to be forgiven we can be made clean from our sins and I know as well that we can live again! Wow! This is so great! I know that God loves us because He gave us His son! I know that if we will continue to use the atonement of Christ in our lives and follow His example that we can return to live with God and like God always in happiness! The church is true! I hope you all listened to general conference and received new information and personal revalation! I definitely did! I know that the words of the prophet and apostles are the words of God and now it is up to us to apply the things we learned! So as  you go about your lives this week, think of our Savior and His love and sacrifice for each one of us and apply at least one of the things that you learned in general conference into your lives! I love you all! Thanks again for everything! 

Love, Soeur Kofford

Ariihau and Herehau!

Holding a toy gun was too good haha ! Dad I miss our adventures together and look so forward to our future memories out on the mountain!

This is today! Last supper with Andy and his family! We ate fish for breakfast . . . haha but it was good! And Holly! I officially really love raw fish! Crazy but true! Life of a Tahitian!

Huahine Comes to an End!

3/30/15

We had another amazing week here on the beautiful island of Huahine. We still do not have our car so were obligated to ride our bikes every day. I do not know how many miles we rode . . . a lot! But I prefer our bikes so its all good! The only problem is that we cannot be as efficient and do all the things that we had normally planned. We really learned to use our time wisely and focused on the most important things. We find over and over again each day that when we are doing our best, God always finds a way to inform us of the things we need to do. A good example of this was yesterday. We had finished with church and had several lessons planned. We set out on our bikes and first tried to see Tila who was not there. After this we went to see Hinatea, Marcel, Tino, Tupu, and Patricia. Two hours later we stopped ourselves in the heat of the sun to take a drink and think about who God had prepared for us to see. There is always someone . . . we just have to find them. At this moment, I thought of Mohelanie! Normally her lessons are on Saturdays but since we had an activity at the church, we were not able to see her on Saturday. When we arrived we found her there seemly waiting to have her lesson! We then found that another one of our investigators, Henriette, was in the house talking to Mohelanies mother. So we had a lovely lesson with Mohelanie and right after with Henriette! This has been a good lesson that I have learned on my mission. If a lesson falls through or someone is not ready or does not have the desire . . . there is always someone else who has more of a need! I have learned to not think too much of canceled lessons and to just continue. To search out who is there and who is ready! The Holy Ghost truly is such an amazing blessing as a missionary! 

I also received my first transfer call this week! I will be transferred April 8th to Papeari, Tahiti! My new companion is Soeur Faana. She is Tahitian and that is all I know about her! I am beyond excited to move on and find the other miracles that my mission has in store for me but at the same time am very sad because I have grown to love life here on Huahine. This is my ward, the members are my family, our investigators are some of my best friends, the stray cats and dogs on the sides of the road are my pets, and everything else has just become home to me! I know that I have been here on the island of Huahine for lots of different reasons! The last four months have treated me so well! It is amazing to see how far I have come with everything. With my teaching skills, with the languages, and with me as a person. I love the fact that we have each new day to change, improve, and become more and more like our Savior. The Christlike attributes are a gift that God has given us. It is a blessing that we have the opportunity to study the life of Christ, the things He did, and the person He is. We need to constantly realize that we have weakness and keep the desire to improve. I love looking for ways to change! And I am excited to change and progress again in my new area! I am so blessed! I know that God lives and that He loves us! I know that we all have such a great potential in our lives here on earth! And that if we will live our lives for God he will help us reach that potential! Thanks again for everything! I love and miss you all! You are in my thoughts and always in my prayers! 

Love, Tuahine Kofford

Little Tahitian friends!

This is the trail we hike every Wednesday for the lesson of Maeva and Heiata! Micheline also just lives about a half mile up! So blessed! Pray for Maeva and her husband to agree to be married so she can be baptized!

Micheline made me this flower crown! She has agreed to be baptized but has to wait until after her marriage in July! I love Micheline!

              This is my second mom Soeur Vanina!

Biking it all day everyday!

Six Months Down!

3/23/15
It is hard for me to believe that I have already lived through 6 months of my mission! One third of my eighteen months has been completed. Time has flown by. Of course there have been the hard days, the hard weeks, and hard lessons, but I can honestly say that I love my mission. It is weird for me to think about my life before my mission. The things that I did and the things that I thought . . . haha the things that I thought were important. I am still me but I am a changed me. I truly consider my mission such a miracle and blessing because I have learned so much that has changed me for the better. I cannot imagine my life without my mission. Soeur Martin and I are doing really well! We run about two miles every day which is such a blessing as well! We have really learned how to work well and effectively together and have found lots of success in our lessons with our investigators. I truly do know that we have each companion for a reason. I have found that its kind of fun getting new companions, finding your weaknesses together and finding ways to overcome them together. With the same goal in mind, it is very possible to find success in a companionship. We have an investigator named Taui. Taui means change in English. He took drugs when he was younger and has been in and out of prison. He told us that he really wants to change his life. Because of the drugs that he took, he did not know how to read when we first started teaching him and it was nearly impossible for him to retain the things that we taught. It has been quite a few weeks now and I can honestly say that Taui is a miracle. For each lesson I wrote little key indicator words on sticky notes so that he could look at them and review them for the next lesson. We would also read for about ten minutes each lesson in the Book of Mormon. On Friday when we had our lesson, I was shocked to see that he remembered every step of the gospel, the Word of Wisdom, that Thomas S. Monson is our prophet, and much much more. And when it came time to read, he read fluently and understood the things he read. Wow. This was super cool for me to see. I truly do know that God loves every one of His children and is willing to help them change, progress, and grow if they do their part. Another thing that was cool for me this week was the fact that I read in Moroni 7 about charity. I want to study this Christlike attribute again but I learned a lot of things that I loved. Charity, as we know, is the pure love of Christ. This means to love perfectly as Christ does. He loves us all and knows us and understands what we are going through. Also, charity never fails. In Moroni 7 we learn that everything must fail, end, or die . . . but not charity. This is something that is constant, something that we can take with us. It is also a gift that we need to ask for through prayer. And it will be granted upon all of the true disciples of Christ. As I thought a little bit about charity this week, my life was better. Life is better with lots of love. I love loving the people I serve, loving my companion, loving the members, and loving Our Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ. So if it has been a long time since you have thought about charity in your lives. . . pray to have charity. Because loving perfectly as Christ does is the best way to love and charity never fails! I love finding new ways to improve myself each day! I love following the example of our Savior and becoming the best I possilbly can. I also love commiting people to follow this example and to be baptized. We are in Christs church! We are in the true church! And we are blessed for this! Thank you again for everything you do for me! Thanks for the love and support and prayers and everything! I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Love, Soeur Heather Kofford

This is Sandrine! We fixed her baptism for April 25th! Please pray for her because she needs to get married first haha! But she is honestly so great! I love Sandrine and we literally have her lesson right on the beach! Paradise mission!!

It rained all day!!! We were literally soaked from head to toe when we got back to the house! This night I took the first warm shower since arriving here and we decided to be a little crazy and drink hot chocolate! Haha love Soeur Martin!

Another Great Week!

3/16/15
Iaorana friends and family! 

It was another great week here on the beautiful island of Huahine! We have continued to see lots of little miracles each day and enjoy the happiness of the gospel in our lives. We have two investigators named Maeva and Heiata. They literally live in the mountain and it takes about 15 minutes to hike to their house for their lesson. Their lesson is each Wednesday at nine in the morning and is one of my favorite lessons of the week! After each lesson they give us each two huge bags of Tahitian manderines and two big papayas! They are so nice and the spirit is always present there. I love being able to enjoy the creations of God here on Huahine. The nature is so beautiful and I am so blessed to be surrounded in it each day! Anyway, this week Maeva and Heiata accepted to be baptized in April! Yay! I am sad because I most likely will not be there for their baptism but it truly is amazing to see the hand of God in peoples lives and if they put in their effort, God will change them. We also had a miracle with Teiva and Florida this week! When I arrived here on Huahine, my second lesson was with Teiva and Florida. Honestly I did not understand a whole lot of what was said but bore a humble testimony and never forgot about this lesson. The weeks passed and we never found the time to go back and revisit. Finally two weeks ago I was prompted to just stop in and see how they were doing. They happily accepted a lesson for a few days later. Before the lesson they explained that they had been thinking a lot of the two young women who taught them a lesson a couple months ago and the good feelings they felt and they had actually talked and wanted another lesson. They also said that one day in the city they ran into a member and asked if he could send us in their direction again. I did not know about any of this! But wow! They were prepared for what we were about to teach! We taught the Restoration and the spirit was so strong! They had recently changed religions and had noticed the faults in their new church. They prayed and we were their answer. Later on in the week, they came to a family night and Soeur Martin and I presented a banner which talks about the Restoration as well as the Plan of Salvation. They loved this! At the end I made my way over to talk to them and Teiva turned to me, pointed at the banner, and said, that is true, I have found the truth! Wow! Such a great moment for me! I love seeing the lives of others change through the gospel! I truly do know that there are people out there searching! And those who search will find. I loved this experience and every experience like this. It is true that we have the hard days but it is choosing to be happy and appreciate the blessings and miracles when they come that motivates me and proves to me over and over that God is real, that His hands are in everything, and that He loves each and every one of His children. Never forget that we are children of God. We are special and He loves us! He has given us the best gift that we could ask for, His son, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ we can have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, be purified of all of our sins, and have the opportunity each day to improve, to progress, to change, and to find true happiness in His gospel. The church is true! Let it bring happiness into your lives. If you will search, the blessings and miracles are there! Thanks again for everything! I am so blessed to have such amazing friends and family who love and support me! I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Love, Tuahine Heather Kofford

Sister Martin and me emailing home on p-day!

Lunch on the beach with Hiti and her family!